(the main drawbacks being: sort of a hassle to input repeating events, no means to automatically sync external invitations and updates to same, no easy way to look up location information in my phone's map software without manually typing in addresses or venue names, difficult to selectively share events)

@aparrish it can be a real pain to "back up" paper notes, so if you misplace your calendar book you can irretrievably lose a lot of information on appointments.

I still make this trade-off and enjoy journaling and writing notes on paper, but it has been devastating on the couple of occasions that I've lost an in-progress paper notebook.

@npd that's a good point, hmm. I want to say that this wouldn't be a problem because I can't think of any other physical notebooks I've misplaced (I already do a lot of physical note-taking!) but of course that doesn't mean that it *can't* happen. on the other hand, almost all of my actual events are arranged through e-mail anyway, so I'll always at least have the initial e-mail messages...

@aparrish yeah, recreation from email or Facebook or wherever is certainly possible. How about you try it out first for a couple years and let us know how it goes? ;)

@aparrish Yeah I got a bullet journal which I don't use religiously every day, but I do use as a general calendar/to-do list and frankly the UX is better.

@aparrish for pen-and-paper TODO (not calendaring) i highly rate this

https://www.corbinizer.com/

I played with adding eg recurring tasks preprinted on one "page", perhaps could do same for a blank month / week / fortnight planner

tiny, easy to modify as you go

@xurizaemon oh this does look cool, thanks!

@aparrish It also doesn’t require a battery!

I’ve settled for that myself. Using the Bullet Journal method: http://bulletjournal.com/

It’s been more than a year and I’m super satisfied with it!

@aparrish i've been thinking about doing the same thing. the only thing i feel like i would lose out on is it doesn't do is let me handle repeated events or move events easily.

@pixelpaperyarn @aparrish i realize this is only tangentially related, but i struggled with bullet journaling until i picked up a nice battery operated stylus and a subscription to a writing app for my phone

In my case it made it all much easier to track my todos; idk, maybe the paper journals i tried were just too big to easily keep on me as as my phone is

It took a little adjusting to get the ink width set up right and to learn to write without resting my palm... but maybe that's an option y'all could consider?

Bonus Round: never having to buy notebooks

@katje @pixelpaperyarn that is interesting! actually though tbh "Having" To Buy A Pretty New Notebook is for me an appealing part of this physical calendar plan (I also regularly have three or four notebooks in my bag at any time in any case)

@aparrish
Bullet Journal sorts me. It's great, however it's led to fountain pen addiction.

@aparrish Works for me. There's always a risk of data loss/corruption, digital or not. I always buy a planner in a bright color and put an email address inside. Have not lost one (for more than a few hours) yet.

You also avoid updates, cloud issues and fighting with flaky software. And it can serve as a kind of interesting archive years later (when the software is dead).

@aparrish I don’t know if this is useful for you, but I switched to emacs and org-mode for task tracking/scheduling and calendaring and haven’t looked back. It can roundtrip to ics so you can use it with google people or the Mac/iOS calendars. And it’s all in plain text so it’s archivable and easy to type out new events. I just edit with a plain text editor on my phone and glance using BeOrg.

@aparrish my partner swears by a good old file-o-fax she'd much day her use that than an electronic version. Problem comes when sharing calendars is a requirement.

@aparrish I went paper about 3 years ago because it stays in my memory better if I write it down and have a notebook as an aide memoire. The GCal notifications are/were too easy to swipe away by mistake or ignore or they would notify too early.

update on this: I did actually get a pen-and-paper planner! (the largest one here: https://us.moleskine.com/12-month-monthly-planner-black/p0283) and I copied over everything from my google calendar this morning, which made me feel accomplished in that busywork sort of way. we'll see how it goes but it feels nice so far. being able to come up with formalisms to represent my schedule on-the-fly instead of wrangling gcal weirdness is a big plus, for instance.

@aparrish do you know bullet journal? You might like it, although I'm guessing it needs a regular notebook, not a planner...